When the President Calls for Executions

Today, the President of the United States called for the execution of Democratic lawmakers.

I’ve written a lot of hard things over the past year, but I keep stopping at this line. Because the “Leader of the Free World” called his political opponents traitors and said their words deserve death. And if I’m being completely upfront, I knew this day would come. Maybe not the exact words, maybe not this exact moment, but I knew the threats would escalate. I knew there would be a line he’d cross that we couldn’t walk back from. And this feels like it.

The man who controls our military and holds the nuclear codes is now saying that members of Congress, his political opponents, deserve to die for reminding service members to follow the law.

What Trump said wasn’t just false. It was dangerous. And it followed a pattern we’ve seen in every authoritarian regime: accuse your enemies of treason, twist the law, then threaten them with death.

Because here’s what actually happened: a group of six Democratic lawmakers, all veterans of the military or intelligence community, released a video reminding troops what the Uniform Code of Military Justice requires. Follow lawful orders. Refuse unlawful ones. That’s not partisan. That’s how the law works.

If a president, or anyone in the chain of command, orders troops to do something illegal, like round up political opponents or open fire on civilians, they are supposed to say no. And those lawmakers were simply reminding them of that duty.

Trump’s response? He picked up his phone and had a public meltdown on the state propaganda network he owns, Trash Social.

He reposted someone with a white nationalist symbol as their profile picture, who said:
“HANG THEM GEORGE WASHINGTON WOULD !!”

He also reposted these: “Indict all of them.” and “Insurrection. TREASON!”

Then he added two posts of his own:

“This is really bad, and Dangerous to our Country. Their words cannot be allowed to stand. SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR FROM TRAITORS!!! LOCK THEM UP??? President DJT ”

And then:

“SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!”

That’s where we are. He hasn’t gone back on Trash Social to say he didn’t mean it. The only so-called clarification came from his press secretary at the podium, claiming he doesn’t want anyone executed while still defending what he said.

History is very clear about what comes next when leaders start talking like this. Hitler’s government created special People’s Courts that handed out death sentences for so-called treason to anyone seen as a threat. Mussolini in Italy and Franco in Spain wrapped their purges in legal language about traitors and enemies of the state, then used that to execute thousands of people whose only real crime was disloyalty to the leader, not to their country.

And let’s be very clear, the lawmakers Trump is targeting did not commit treason. They did the opposite. They reminded troops that their oath is to the Constitution, and that they are required to disobey unlawful orders.

The phrase he keeps using, “seditious behavior” isn’t even a real charge. The closest crime is seditious conspiracy, which carries up to twenty years in prison, not death. Treason is rare, and executions for it haven’t happened in modern times.

He’s not just using the language of death. He’s getting the law completely wrong while he does it, which is on purpose. He knows his followers won’t actually check the facts; they’ll just take whatever he says at face value and act accordingly. The lawmakers in question have already received thousands of threats since he went on this rampage against them, which is exactly what he wants. He always uses his army of loyal subjects to carry out his dirty work.

And that, too, is a tactic straight out of the authoritarian playbook. Dictators don’t usually begin by openly violating the law. They begin by twisting it just enough to turn justice into a weapon.

In Nazi Germany, ordinary courts were pushed aside and replaced with special tribunals built to deliver death sentences to political enemies. In Stalin’s Soviet Union, vague charges like “anti-Soviet activity” justified show trials that always ended in prison or death. The laws stayed on the books. They just stopped protecting the people they were meant to serve.

This is a warning shot. And a test to see who stays quiet, and who speaks up before it’s too late.

And remember who is talking about death here.

This is the same man whose administration has turned military strikes on alleged “narco-terrorist” boats in the Caribbean and Pacific into a regular campaign. Our government is killing people with no trial, no judge, no chance to defend themselves, and the public never sees proof of who they even were.

When things feel this dark, which they have often in recent times, I find myself searching for someone, anyone, willing to speak with clarity. Someone who doesn’t flinch or try to spin it into something softer than what it is.

Today, that was Senator Chris Murphy. He stood in front of a camera and didn’t look away from what just happened. He named it. And he said this:

“The president of the United States just called for members of Congress to be executed. If you are a person of influence in this country, maybe it is time to pick a f**king side.”

He is right.

But I’d take it even farther when it comes to influence, because we are all people of influence. You do not have to be a senator or a cable host to be “a person of influence.” You have influence in your family, in your friend group, in your workplace, in your town. You have influence when you refuse to let people laugh this off. You have influence when you support independent journalists and people bringing you the truth. You have influence when you share information from outlets that still check facts before they publish.

What’s happening right now will be studied by students trying to understand how it was allowed to go this far. Just like so many of us questioned the exact same thing about what happened during WW2.

When we ask how ordinary Germans let Hitler consolidate power, or how Chile slid into dictatorship in the nineteen seventies, the answer is almost never one single day. It is a series of moments that felt survivable in the short term. A leader calling opponents traitors. Each step feels easier to endure than to confront. Only when you line them up on a timeline does the pattern become impossible to ignore.

Our grandchildren will line them up. They will ask the same question we have asked about other eras. Why did so many people look away?

Every night I sit here and choose which horrors from the day I can fit into a single post, and I still feel like I’m leaving half the story on the cutting room floor. Today, I cut ten other major stories, each one bad enough to stand on its own, because this one was the worst. This one crossed a line we can’t ignore. Days like today remind me why I keep going. Because silence is its own kind of choice.

And because America is worth it. Worth the fight. Worth the discomfort. Worth holding the line even when it feels like everything is breaking.

We’ve never gotten through the hardest chapters of our history by looking away. We’ve gotten through them by standing up and saying, “Not this time.”

And now it’s our turn.

I’ll see you tomorrow,
Heather

P.S. If you’ve made it this far, chances are we see things the same way. You can help keep this work going by subscribing to my Substack; there’s a free option, or you can become a paid subscriber for just $5 a month. Paid subscriptions help me reach more people, cover more ground, and keep telling the truth about what’s happening to our country.